ON THE WATERFRONT: CULTURE, HERITAGE AND REGENERATION OF PORT CITIES
10
PLANNING SYSTEMS:
DO THEY FIT THE CURRENT NEEDS OF
HISTORIC
PORT CITIES?
Dennis Rodwell International Consultant in Cultural Heritage
and Sustainable Urban Development
ON THE WATERFRONT: CULTURE, HERITAGE AND REGENERATION OF PORT CITIES
Port Cities that have lost their principal function, in some
cases their raison d’être, present a particular challenge for
conservation and regeneration. Port Cities are not just
about buildings and infrastructure.They express and bear
witness to a whole way of life: of exchange, communication
and conviviality; and of a mélange of tangible and intangible
cultural heritage traditions focused on the natural element
of water.
Are we simply concerned with conserving the vestiges of
their historic built environment and – through ‘regeneration’ –
redefining all other aspects of their heritage, especially at
their waterfronts: from the ‘low life’ of sailors, dockside
workers, street traders, hostels and bars; to the ‘high life’
of plush offices, expensive apartments, and luxury cruise
ships? Do top-down planning policies and investment
strategies best suit the distinctive identity and immense
diversity of the world’s numerous port cities, be they
large or small, sea or river? How do we define the
parameters of their authenticity and integrity and for
the evolution of their genius loci, or spirit of place?
This workshop discussed aims and means, and took a
critical look at aspects of national and regional planning
policies, models and directives, and local interpretation
of them in practice.
PAGE 2
INTRODUCTION
Port cities provided the main theme for a
number of conferences in the second half
of 2008, including in France, Germany and
the United States1, and of course this
conference held in Liverpool.This degree
of attention is hardly surprising: at least
half of the world’s cities were founded at
locations that profited from trading and
other links by sea, river or canal and can
therefore be considered as ‘port cities’.
The distinguishing characteristic of
historic port cities is the specificity of
inter-related activities that take place at
or close to their waterfronts, together
with the relationships that these inspire
between people, boats and shipping;
the loading and unloading of raw
materials and merchandise; buyers
and sellers, stallholders and merchants.
Waterfronts manifest multiple forms of
human interaction: of social meeting as
well as business.Those of large maritime
ports host extensive transient populations,
catered for by a range of hostels, bars and
restaurants, marginal activities such as the
‘informal economy’ and brothels, and an
above average share of souvenir hunters
and tattoo studios.They function to a
specific form of spontaneous order
that constitutes chaos to urban planners:
neither well understood nor appreciated.
Planning systems impact variously on
historic cities according to issues of
national and local governance and
essential factors such as time and place.
The degree to which they may or may
not meet the current needs of historic
port cities will depend: firstly, on the
responsiveness of national and regional
planning policies, models and directives;
and secondly, the degree of discretion
that is delegated to local authorities and
communities and how this is exercised.
Notes
1. The European Association for Urban History
conference ‘Comparative History of European
Cities’, Lyon, August 2008, included two main
sessions focused on port cities and a number
of presentations in specialist sessions; HafenCity
University, Hamburg, hosted ‘The Fixity and Flow
of Urban Waterfronts’ in October 2008; and
Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, hosted
‘Global Port Cities and Networking from the
20th to the 21st Century’ in November 2008.
ON THE WATERFRONT: CULTURE, HERITAGE AND REGENERATION OF PORT CITIES
20TH TO 21ST CENTURY IMPACTS
ON HISTORIC PORT CITIES
GLOBALISATION:
THREAT OR OPPORTUNITY?
The major impacts are predominantly
to be found in sea port cities where,
from the 1960s onwards, the changeover
in international shipping practices
from manually intensive dockside to
predominantly automated containerisation
led to the use of far larger ships and
the relocation of freight activity
to specialised container ports and
distribution centres served by new
landside rail and road links.
Historic sea port cities were places
of economic exchange and leading
gateways for the transmission of
people, goods, cultural and social
networks between peoples.They were
cosmopolitan: multi-cultural, multi-ethnic
and multi-faith.The exchange of goods
and ideas included building materials
and technologies, architectural design
and urban planning.
This created voids at their historic
waterfronts. From symbols of prosperity
their dock areas degenerated into
symbols of economic and social decay,
often with impacts across the whole
city. In few world cities was this
transformation as swift or as complete
as in Liverpool, a city whose very
existence depended on shipping,
maritime trade and associated
commerce and industries.2
We tend to think of globalisation as a
twentieth century phenomenon; also,
in some circles, as one to be resisted.
But globalisation is not new.The 1,000
year-old maritime mercantile republics
of Venice and Dubrovnik, for example,
enjoyed a quasi-globalised as well as
balanced trading, cultural and ecological
relationship to their extended hinterlands,
and hosted a mélange of ethnic and
religious communities from the full
length and breadth of the Mediterranean
and beyond.
PAGE 3
The port of Liverpool epitomised later
globalisation beyond the confines of
Europe into the New and Third Worlds.
Such ports became major nodes in a
worldwide capitalist network and
supported the integration of multiethnic neighbourhoods – such as
Liverpool’s Chinatown, home to
Europe’s oldest Chinese community –
with resultant gain to the human traditions
of their host city and without loss of
elemental identity and sense of place.
Critically, throughout the period of
their heydays, Adriatic sea port cities
such as Dubrovnik and Venice and
Atlantic ones such as Liverpool were in
control of their own destinies. In their
urban management they were not
answerable to outside planning policies
and directives; in their architectural
expressions they interpreted outside
influences but were not beholden
to them.
The strong sense of place in these cities
was reinforced by strict local planning
regulations.Those of Dubrovnik, for
example, date from 1272 and continue
to guide building heights and materials
(but not architectural style), colours
and advertising in that city (Fig.1).3
Fig.1: Dubrovnik, Croatia: an
historical example of globalisation in
the socio-economic sense, but one whose
strictly enforced local urban planning
regulations have protected its architectural
homogeneity, cultural distinctiveness,
and sense of place. (© Dennis Rodwell)
The protection of sense of place in the
context of multiple influences is not
therefore a new phenomenon. It is the
geo-cultural spread, the diversity and
rapidity of communication sources,
the widespread lack of effective,
locally-determined regulatory frameworks,
and burgeoning uniformity that is more
recent. As one critic has put it:
Notes
2. Rodwell, D 2008 ‘Urban Regeneration and
the Management of Change: Liverpool and
the Historic Urban Landscape’. Journal of
Architectural Conservation 14 (2), 83-106.
3. Rodwell, D 2004 ‘Dubrovnik, Pearl of the
Adriatic’. World Heritage Review 38, 68-79.
4. Hunt, D 2006 Memoirs: Military and Diplomatic.
London: Trigraph, 286.
ON THE WATERFRONT: CULTURE, HERITAGE AND REGENERATION OF PORT CITIES
PAGE 4
Fig.1
Fig.3
Fig.2
Fig.4
ON THE WATERFRONT: CULTURE, HERITAGE AND REGENERATION OF PORT CITIES
‘Never before has the world been so
firmly in the grip of an establishment like
the present architectural one, the most
rigid in the history of art. All modern
cities, as they are rebuilt, grow to resemble
each other more. Rio and Hong Kong, to
take two with rather similar settings, are
clothing themselves more and more in
the same style; London and Tokyo come
closer each year’.4
APPROACHES TO REGENERATION
AND CONSERVATION
What are today’s options to kick-start
the cycle of transformation from retreat
and neglect to recovery in historic
port cities?
• Strategic directives determined
by centralised planning policies
that are not place-specific?
• Piece-meal market-led regeneration
from outside investors with no
community loyalty?
• Community-led regeneration
from within?
Are these workable and effective
as discrete alternatives? And if not,
how does one coordinate them
into a coherent vision and secure
a sustainable future?
Where do conservation objectives
fit into this picture – to the fore or
sidelined? Does conservation only
address issues relating to the built
environment; and if not, how do
established urban planning and
protective mechanisms incorporate
intangible, human factors, especially the
‘spontaneous order’ that characterises
maritime waterfronts?
THE TYPOLOGY OF
REGENERATION
The transformation from ‘low life’ to
‘high life’ is typical of the top-down
investment-led approach to regeneration
in historic maritime ports and the
re-invention of their waterfronts with
prestige offices, high value apartments,
hotels and leisure facilities, tourism
and cruise ships.
PAGE 5
Quebec City on the Saint Lawrence
River, something of an exception to
the generality in that it remains a fully
operational trading port close to the city
centre, is nevertheless a major tourist
destination and port of call for cruise
ships from all round the world.The historic
heart, Vieux Québec, the twelfth most
visited city in the world with eight
million visitors a year, is host to a
concentration of bars, restaurants,
souvenir shops, art and sculpture
galleries. But how viable is a local
community that is no longer served
by a bread shop, and wherein lies
the continuity of its distinctive spirit
of place (Fig.2)? 5
Fig.2: Quebec City, Canada.
Under the pressures of tourism,
the resident population of Vieux Québec has reduced to around 5,000,
insufficient to support local services.
(© Dennis Rodwell)
Historic waterfronts act as catalysts
for economic regeneration and enable
people to reconnect with historic
quayside areas whether for business
or social exchange, residence or leisure.
Also, in the case of a historic port city
such as Liverpool where the docks were
physically separated from the inland
commercial and residential parts of
the city, regeneration has opened up
lengths of the waterfront to wider
access.The rescue and mixed-use
conversion of the Albert Dock complex
pioneered heritage-led regeneration at
a critical period in the city’s history in
the 1980s and attracted people en
masse to a revitalised sector of its
dockland (Fig.3).
Fig.3: Albert Dock, Liverpool, England,
whose restoration and conversion in
the 1980s into a spectrum of cultural
(Tate Modern, National Maritime Museum,
Beatles Story), retail, leisure and residential
uses inspired a post-industrial vision for
Liverpool. (© Dennis Rodwell)
Notes
4. Rodwell, D 2008 ‘Signs of a revitalised,
more relevant, ICOMOS’. Context 107, 8-9.
ON THE WATERFRONT: CULTURE, HERITAGE AND REGENERATION OF PORT CITIES
Historic waterfronts have also inspired
some highly creative examples of
modern architecture which define
today’s image of certain cities (Fig.4).
Fig.4: Opera House, Sydney,
Australia: an example of contemporary
waterfront architecture that provides
the defining image of a city in the
New World. (© Dennis Rodwell)
The temptation to proliferate such
undoubted, individual success stories,
employing ‘signature architects’ to design
‘iconic’ interventions, has not however
always led to favourable outcomes.
CENTRALISATION – VERSUS – DECENTRALISATION Symptomatic of centralist government
policy in the United Kingdom is the
concentration of people, employment
opportunities and decision-making in
the south east of England and the
inevitable ‘North-South divide’.The Yes
Minister and Yes Prime Minister books
and television series in the 1980s
remorselessly satirised repeated
efforts to decentralise government
departments and related bodies from
the South East to the North and the
equally determined efforts of civil
servants and others to undermine
them.6 Principal amongst the reasons
were distance from London (where
they and their families lived) and from
Cambridge and Oxford (where the
majority had attended university
and where reunion dinners were
held regularly).
A vivid reminder of the failure of
decentralist efforts to bear fruit arose
just a few weeks before this conference.
Cities Unlimited, published by what the
media described as a ‘right-leaning think
tank’, cited some cities in the north of
England – notably Liverpool and Hull –
as effectively beyond revival owing to
their poor locations, and proposed that
mass migration to London, Cambridge
and Oxford [sic] would prevent people
becoming ‘trapped’ in poorer areas.7
The absurdity of the notion that
geography rather than government
policy is a determining factor in the
potential of a historic sea port to
recover from the cycle of decline can
be evidenced from the northern city
of Oulu in Finland, 300 kilometres
south of the Arctic Circle.
PAGE 6
Historically a river and maritime
trading port based on timber, salmon,
furs and hides, Oulu had fallen into
serious decline by the 1970s. Since then
it has evolved into a major centre for
research and development in fields
related to satellite technology and
mobile telephones: a re-invention of
the historical role of Oulu as a centre
of communication.8 Whereas in
population terms it is now Finland’s sixth
city; in air traffic terms Oulu airport is
now second after Helsinki.
NATIONAL MODELS AND
LOCAL INTERPRETATION:
UNITED KINGDOM
Compared to many European countries,
one of the defining characteristics of
urban planning in the United Kingdom
since at least the Second World War
has been the concentration of the most
volatile pressures for redevelopment –
especially for commercial uses – in their
most sensitive historic cores.
The city’s pioneering spirit and new
self-image have been encouraged
by regional economic development
policies that offer a high degree of fiscal
autonomy and favour initiatives taken
at local level over those generated or
imposed by national government.
Are cities like Liverpool and Hull
less accessible than Oulu?
Notes
6. Lynn, J and Jay, A(eds) 1984 The Complete Yes
Minister. London: Guild Publishing; Lynn, J and Jay,
A(eds) 1986 Yes Prime Minister:Volume 1.
London: Guild Publishing; and Lynn, J and
Jay, A (eds) 1987 Yes Prime Minister:
Volume I1. London: Guild Publishing.
7. Leunig,T and Swaffield, J 2008 Cities Unlimited.
London: Policy Exchange.
8. Rodwell, D 2008 ‘Picking up the threads in
Lyon’. Context 106, 9–10.
ON THE WATERFRONT: CULTURE, HERITAGE AND REGENERATION OF PORT CITIES
Continuity of their historically compact,
mixed use characteristics, and the
socio-economic diversity and human
vibrancy that attaches to ‘spontaneous
order’ and is fundamental to today’s
concept of the sustainable city, formed
no part of national planning policies that
followed models of land use separation
inspired by Ebenezer Howard and
promoted by the Modern Movement.9
The tools for an alternative approach that
would support continuity, in harmony, of
the tangible (architectural) and intangible
(human) cultural traditions in a city do not
exist nor has there been the will to devise
them. As was stated unambiguously in a
publication that coincided with European
Architectural Heritage Year 1975: ‘... “the
starting point in a historic town must be
its historic quality and visual character”
– not secondary social, economic or
even ecological arguments’.10
However, within a protective system
that is highly fragmented11, even the
visual character of United Kingdom cities
is not protected by government policy;
rather the reverse.The 2007 document
Guidance on tall buildings recommends
‘that local authorities should now identify
appropriate locations for tall buildings in
their development plan documents’.12
Whereas apologists point to certain
provisos, ones that could be applied to
protect the integrity of distinctive urban
landscapes, it is clear that the fact and
timing of this document encourages
policies at local level that favour the
construction of tall buildings at key
locations in cities – including along the
Liverpool waterfront, in what amounts to
a crude parody of its twin city of Shanghai
and manifests serious loss of identity and
sense of place (Figs.5 & 6).
Fig.5: Liverpool waterfront.With the
exception of the trio of landmark
buildings at the Pier Head to the left of this
photograph (Fig.6), the urban landscape at
the time of the city’s pre-eminence as a port
city was characterised by long, low, brick-built
dockside warehouses.The rising ground
behind allowed the skyline to punctuate this
panorama – here featuring the Anglican
cathedral. (© Dennis Rodwell)
Fig.6: The Liverpool waterfront to the
north of the Pier Head (seen far right
in this image, with the tower of the Anglican
cathedral just visible behind), illustrating
the recent damage inflicted on the urban
landscape as the result of incoherent
contemporary interventions.
(© Dennis Rodwell)
PAGE 7
Furthermore, received thinking continues
to support strong competition between
cities within limited, saturated business
sectors.The billion pound development
by Grosvenor Estates of ‘Liverpool One’,
just inland from today’s waterfront, may
on the face of it provide Liverpool with
a shopping magnet to counteract the
gravitational pull of Manchester, but
evidence of the true cost to the city
in terms of impact on the periphery
comes as no surprise as ‘Liverpool
gains the ignoble title of highest [retail]
vacancy rate in a major UK city’.13
redevelopment pressures away from
the city centre and enabling freedom
of architectural expression both in
height and design without negative
impact on the historic core.
Notes
NATIONAL MODELS AND LOCAL
INTERPRETATION: FRANCE
France is prominent among continental
European countries to adopt national
and regional planning policies together
with local bye-laws that encourage
more sustainable approaches to urban
continuity and development in historic
cities. Legislation dating from 1930
provides for the protection of the
urban landscape of entire cities, and
in the post-War regional plan for the
river port city of Paris the administrative
and business quarter of La Défense
was located outside the boulevard
périphérique, thus syphoning major
9. Rodwell, D 2007 Conservation and Sustainability
in Historic Cities. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
10. Cantacuzino, S.(ed.) 1975 Architectural
Conservation in Europe. London: Architectural
Press.The passage cited here appears at page
4 in the editorial; the passage quoted within it
appears at page 18 in the chapter by Worskett, R
‘Great Britain: Progress in Conservation’.
11. Rodwell 2007 Conservation and Sustainability
in Historic Cities.
12. CABE and English Heritage 2007 Guidance
on tall buildings. London: CABE and English
Heritage; http://www.english-<heritage.org.uk/
upload/pdf/CABE_and_English_Heritage
_Guidance_on_tall_buildings.pdf?1265111862>
accessed 1 February 2010.
13. ‘Empty shops – which town takes the crown’,
report of Experian’s Retail Risk Ranking;
<http://www.estatesgazette.com/blogs/
focus/2009/07/> accessed 1 February 2010.
ON THE WATERFRONT: CULTURE, HERITAGE AND REGENERATION OF PORT CITIES
PAGE 8
Further support to the mixed use urban
grain of the historic city is provided by a
combination of local planning regulations
and protectionist policies towards artisan
businesses that date at least from the
time of Baron Haussmann in the 1850s.
Similar instruments safeguard continuity
in the historic character of the Atlantic
port city of Bordeaux.
BY WAY OF A CONCLUSION
Fig.5
Fig.6
At the end of this workshop I invited
participants to proffer their personal
ripostes to the question that was posed
in the title:‘Planning systems: do they fit
the current needs of historic port cities?’
The responses reflected United Kingdom
experience and were volunteered by
individuals working in central and local
government. Firstly, in the UK we do not
step back, start from first principles, and
ask the essential questions. Secondly,
even more unambiguously, the planning
system in the United Kingdom does
not fit the needs of any historic cities,
let alone port cities.
This recalled a presentation given
by Professor Bruno Gabrielli of the
University of Genoa at a workshop held
in early-2007 as part of the ongoing
UNESCO initiative on historic urban
landscapes, in which he articulated what
he described as a ‘crisis of legitimacy’
in the theory and practice of urban
planning today. He posited the need for
a new approach that re-positions urban
planning as part of a continuous cultural
process that embraces tangible and
intangible aspects, reinforces genius loci
and associative values, and engages with
ecological and environmental issues.
He envisaged this as a project that
focuses on quality and the recovery
of cultural and social dignity to the
degraded parts of cities.14
Notes
14. Rodwell, D and Van Oers, R 2007
‘Summary Report of the Regional Conference
of Countries of Eastern and Central Europe
on “Managementand Preservation of Historic
Centers of Cities inscribed on the World
Heritage List”, Saint Petersburg, Russian
Federation, 29 January to 2 February 2007’.
Paris: UNESCO; <http://whc.unesco.org/
uploads/activities/documents/activity-47-7.pdf>
accessed 1 February 2010.
ON THE WATERFRONT: CULTURE, HERITAGE AND REGENERATION OF PORT CITIES
Planning systems for historic port
cities that conform to a typology of
regeneration that favours the re-invention
of their waterfronts to sanitised,
gentrified models and fails to address
the socio-economic and environmental
issues of their cities as a whole, may
resolve certain physical issues to the
delight of city image-makers but do
not match the ambition either of
Professor Gabrielli’s vision or that
expressed by a number of the speakers
at this conference.15 The breadth
of cross-disciplinary evaluation and
management tools that are required
to coordinate the concepts that comprise
and define the distinctive identity of
individual cities – their unique spirit of
place – have yet to be incorporated
into the discipline of urban planning.
Articulating what we mean by the terms
authenticity and integrity – key words in
the lexicon of international conservation
but absent from that of the United
Kingdom – in the context of historic
cities would be an important first step,
followed by the refinement of urban
planning tools that recognise and
applaud the specific ‘spontaneous
order’ that is the life blood of historic
port cities.
PAGE 9
BIOGRAPHY
Dennis Rodwell is a consultant architect-planner. He works
internationally in the field of cultural heritage, focused on the
promotion and achievement of best practice in the management
of the historic environment. He has been rapporteur to recent
UNESCO and ICOMOS events focused on the historic urban
landscapes initiative. Previously a principal in private practice as a
conservation architect, he has also served in local authority posts
as conservation officer, urban designer and principal planner, and
successfully promoted the rescue of a number of historic buildings
at risk. He writes and publishes widely on the theme of conservation
and sustainability in historic cities, including Conservation and
Sustainability in Historic Cities, Blackwell, Oxford, 2007.
Notes
15. Rodwell, D 2009 ‘Chequered histories and
distinctive futures’. Context 108, 9-10.
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